The Europe with which America has dealt is dead politically, never to return. NATO’s purpose ended in 1961 when Pres. Kennedy said that massive nuclear response was no longer U.S. policy. In Germany 42% of all births in 2017 were to migrants from Middle East or Africa-Angelo Codevilla, 1/17/19

The ensuing plans for a gallant common stand at the Fulda Gap with conventional weapons were fantasies based on hope, and on willful ignorance about Soviet military doctrine. Transferred East German Air Force war plans show that, as Soviet military literature had made clear, the Soviets would have precluded such a clash by opening the conflict with nuclear strikes on NATO storage sites and troop concentrations, confident that the Americans would keep the nuclear war local and one sided.

The 1960s and 70s saw unseemly and dysfunctional mutual diplomatic leapfrogs of each other with regard to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Would Willi Brandt’s Ostpolitik prevail or Henry Kissinger’s? Ronald Reagan, Helmut Kohl, and Margaret Thatcher managed a fruitful though brief exception in their time. Because Europe neither has nor is producing any more such statesmen, never mind any Adneauers or de Gaulles, its foreign policy devolved into back-seat driving America’s foreign policy, then into a brake on America’s.

History is full of examples of alliances less potent than the parties thereto, never mind than of the parts’ sum. Writing in Federalist Papers 18 and 38, James Madison referred to Greece’s Amphictyonic League (5th to 2nd century BC) to caution Americans about the tendency of alliances to devolve into strife and tyranny. Winston Churchill, in the first volume of his memoirs of WWII, explained in some detail how Britain and France, looking to each other for support against Germany, had failed to do what each would likely have done for itself alone. From Britain’s standpoint, he wrote, “There is something to be said for isolation; there is something to be said for alliances. But there is nothing to be said for weakening the power on the continent with whom you would be in alliance, and then involving yourself more in continental tangles in order to make it up to them.”

Though NATO is a far less consequential bureaucracy than the EU—few take it seriously—its residual symbolic value and the habits of dependence that it has fostered are among modern Europe’s defining features. Germany’s Chancellor Merkel and France’s President Macron continue the tradition of verbally promoting Europe’s assumption of responsibility for its own military security while damning America for considering letting Europe actually exercise it. They praise Obama for his commitment to Europe, and blame Trump for lack thereof, though Obama removed the last U.S. main battle tanks from Europe, and Trump added troops. Meanwhile, U.S. officials, seemingly wanting auxiliaries rather than allies, chastise Europeans for not doing more for themselves while dissuading them from forming autonomous forces. The military relationship has an air of unreality, if not of farce.

The underlying reality is that the Europe with which America has dealt is waning demographically, ceasing to exist culturally, and is dead politically, never to return. Today, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. are disappearing biologically: In Germany, for example, 42% of all births in 2017 were to migrants from the Middle East or Africa. That percentage is already set to rise. Natives’ birth rates are far below replacement levels (Italy’s is 1.34 births per woman), together with the migration of young Middle Eastern/African people, well-nigh guarantees the end of Europe’s biological character, fast. Its cultural character is changing even faster. We can only guess the extent to which Europe may be able to maintain a European identity in the face of migration.

That is why the salient questions about U.S.–Europe relations are of scarce importance. What does it matter whether Germany and others devote 2% of GDP to the military instead of 1.2%? What would they buy with the rest and, far more important, what would they do with it?What do they have in themselves to do for themselves, never mind for us?

General James Mattis wrote in his letter of resignation as Secretary of Defense that “our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.”That was never so, and is less so now.”